With the exam finals coming up for most students around the UK here’s a little help and friendly advice on what to DO leading up to your exams and how to breeze through the process.
Posted in General Advice, Education and Learning

Set out a study plan early and stick to it. Organise all the things, you want to do (e.g. watch that football match) and fix your timetable around theses treats, it will help you focus on revising and not get distracted. For example, if I do three hours of revision in the morning then I can still go shopping later! This can be a massive help when trying to find the motivation to get through the next three hours of algebra…

You’ve applied for tons of jobs for months and months but it just seems like a dead end because you never seem to get a response. Maybe your CV needs some work! Below are major tips to getting past the first stage of the interview process and creating a CV to impress your potential employer.

Contact details: This should be the first section of your CV and include your name, mobile number and email address. Some people take it a step further by adding a profile picture however this is completely optional and not a requirement.

Personal statement: A personal statement is like an introduction to who you are. It should be a summary that reflects your goals, skills, and ambitions. It explains what you can offer as an employee and what you are looking for. Keep it short, sweet and simple but make sure you outline why you are a suitable candidate for the role.

Work experience: This is obvious, you should list all your relevant work experience (including work placements, volunteering and apprenticeships) with the most recent going first. Make sure you use this section to its full capacity by going into specific details of what you have done in previous roles that makes you well equipped to work effectively in the role you are applying for. Include your job title, the name of the organization you worked at, the time of your post and your main responsibilities.

Education: In this section, you simply need to list and date all your previous and current professional and educational qualifications with your most recent going first.Skills and achievements: This is your chance to stand out and show how you may be different from other candidates. Do you speak other languages? Are you Prince2 certified? Have you raised money for a charity? If so, this is your time to brag about your proudest moments and attributes!

Hobbies and interests: This is an opportunity to show the employer a better idea of the type of person you are. Make your interests relevant to the job you are applying for, i.e. if you’re applying for a role with a fashion company, a great interest would be - ‘In my spare time, I love attending fashion shows and creating posts for my personal fashion blog’.

References: A lot of people opt out of providing the exact contact details of their references at this point and leave it till they’re requested at the interview or hiring stage. The decision to include these details on your CV is entirely up to you. If you choose to provide this information at a later stage of the hiring process you can simply write ‘reference available upon request’.

Here at TCHC, we run a range of programmes designed to put you on the path of employment. The programmes include services that can help you with your CV writing skills in order to present yourself in the best light possible to your future employer! Visit tchc.net today to learn more about all the support you can get in putting together the perfect CV. You can also check out our employment guide for tips and tricks.

What does Kelly Holmes and Michael Owen got in common apart from the obvious that is?

Well they’ve both taken the icould.com/buzz test and they’re both Polar Bears! Or in personality terms they are strong and determined and enjoy being the boss. Polar Bears enjoy working independently and are happy in their own company.

January is a time for New Year’s resolutions and changing things in our lives for the better. It may be to exercise more, give up something that we think is not good for us or do more of something we did not get round to doing in the previous year! Mine is to get out and run more - how about you?

January is also an important time to think about what you are doing and plan for the future. Young people across the country are in the middle of deciding what to do with their lives and this is especially relevant for those who are in their GCSE year or older.

With the world in financial meltdown, it is easy to think that getting a job in the future will be extremely difficult. But our generation has just as much reason to be optimistic about the future as anyone else. We are millennials, a term used to describe young people who were born between 1980 and 2000 and brought up in the Digital Age.

Hello, and thanks for coming back to check out my third entry. In my last entry I left you all on a cliff hanger. Paula and I had finished our first meeting together and I was feeling much better about going to meet her.

I'll be continuing this story from where I left off. I hope my experiences will help you through your journey of being NEET.

If you have decided to start looking for work you may be busy giving out your CV and attending interviews. We all get frustrated when we hear nothing back after hours of walking around giving out CVs. You need to stay positive and keep motivated, don’t lose focus or give up.

Hello, thank you for taking the time to come back and check out my second entry about being N.E.E.T in Cambridge. I left you all on a cliff-hanger when I had just received a call from a woman named Paula. So without further ado – let’s dive back in!

In the past few months there has been a post circulating the internet talking about the rules they never teach you in school. I came across it, and even though it’s very directly put, I wanted to post it here.

As a young person you might think that it’s all rubbish, but these are life lessons I had to learn on my own, and I’m sure this is true for many people. I think if someone said these words to me at the age of 17 it would’ve made a big difference not just in my career, but also in my personal life. It would’ve saved me a lot of heartache and trouble along the way.

Feeling like you’re stuck is definitely not a unique problem, whether you’ve grown up with very little or come from a middle class working family, many people get to a point where they feel stuck in a situation and can’t see a way out. Learning how to deal with the feeling of being stuck is perhaps one of life’s most important lessons because if you know how to deal with this, no matter at what point in your life, you’ll be able to get “un-stuck”.

When it comes to choices about what career to follow, this can often be a difficult thing to do. The decisions we make when we are 16 and 17 years old can affect the rest of our lives, so it is important to think long and hard about the type of work you might enjoy and what steps you are going to take to get there.